TED Blog » Cesar Haradahttp://blog.ted.com
The TED Blog shares interesting news about TED, TED Talks video, the TED Prize and more.Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:08:50 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/909a50edb567d0e7b04dd0bcb5f58306?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png » Cesar Haradahttp://blog.ted.com
Mazda names four TED Fellows “Rebels with a Cause.” Psst: One of their new projects will get funded based on your votehttp://blog.ted.com/mazda-names-four-ted-fellows-rebels-with-a-cause/
http://blog.ted.com/mazda-names-four-ted-fellows-rebels-with-a-cause/#commentsWed, 08 Oct 2014 17:55:45 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=92636[…]]]>Andrew Bastawrous dreams of a bakery in Nakuru, Kenya, that will not only make delicious treats but raise money for subsidized vision care. Robert Simpson envisions First Responders, a program to make satellite data available to citizen scientists in crisis situations, to guide aid efforts from afar. Cesar Harada wants to create larger prototypes of his highly maneuverable sailing robots, designed to collect ocean data and clean up oil spills. Ryan Holladay imagines a series of artistic pit stops along California’s Highway 1.

At the end of October, Mazda will offer a grant to fund one of these four projects. Which one will it be? That is up to you. The grant will go to whichever project gets the most popular support online. Mazda is looking to celebrate — and fund — people who are challenging conventions to make things better.

Which project should you vote for? Read more about these four iconoclasts and their big ideas below.

Get to know: Eye surgeon Andrew BastawrousThe Cliffs notes: Andrew Bastawrous is a TED2014 Fellow who created a smartphone eye exam app, PEEK, to reach people in Kenya who otherwise wouldn’t visit a doctor.Inspiring quote: “In Kenya, 4 out of every 5 people who are blind don’t need to be.”His new project: The Ujima Bakery, a social enterprise bakery that will employ locals in Nakuru, Kenya. It will offer up healthy foods, and proceeds help support free eye care in Nakuru.What winning this grant would mean for his project: “This grant would help us accelerate the growth of the Ujima Bakery, which will generate profits to subsidize eye care to those in the area who cannot afford it. The grant will also be used to support St. Mary’s Hospital, where so many of our patients have received excellent care. This support may be in the form of a vehicle to enable more patients to be picked up, or funding towards their ongoing program until the bakery is generating sufficient funds for long-term sustainability. The grant would also enable us to start getting PEEK out there to those who need it most.”Watch his TED Talk: Get your next eye exam on a smartphone

Get to know: Science crowdsourcer Robert SimpsonThe Cliffs notes: Robert is a TED2014 Fellow who has created a way for everyday folks to contribute to science through the online platform Zooniverse. So far, users have discovered a galaxy and contributed to breast cancer research.Inspiring quote: “The excitement that I feel as an astronomer when I discover something — I get to convey that to people who discovered for it for themselves.”His new project: First Responders, which would make aerial photography data available to citizen scientists during disasters in real-time, so they can offer from-the-air help to first responders.What winning this grant would mean for his project: “At the Zooniverse, we want to get into the humanitarian space and try to put our crowdsourcing platform to use to more directly help people. Imagine if, as well as donating money, people could give their time and brain power to help spot people in trouble, find access routes, or map other data crucial for the people on the ground. We’d love to make that happen, and the grant would kickstart those efforts.”Read his TED profile: You found a planet!: Accelerating discovery at Zooniverse

Get to know: Environmental inventor Cesar HaradaThe Cliffs notes: Cesar is a TED Senior Fellow who created Protei, a sailing robot with open-source technology designed for efficient cleanup of oil and plastics from the sea. He looks for ways to use natural ocean phenomenon, like currents and wind, to curb disasters.Inspiring quote: “The crazy person to me is the person who doesn’t take risks, who denies their own capacity to influence change in the world.”His new project: So far, Protei prototypes have been small, autonomous vehicles about a meter long. Harada would like to make larger versions, to make the technology big enough for the open ocean and to see what happens when sailors and surfers are able to control its movement.What winning this grant would mean for his project: “This grant would change everything for us. We would be able to build and operate a two-person boat and create larger autonomous sailing robots. It would also allow us to do more mapping around Fukushima, where the power plant exploded in 2011 about 100 kilometers away from my family. This is not a Japanese problem—it is a global problem. There will be more nuclear accidents in the future, and we need to be ready. For me, this is emotional because Mazda has its headquarters in Hiroshima. It’s a company built on the ashes of the nuclear bomb, a symbol of Japanese courage and vitality. Japan is now in a similar situation. To have Mazda support our work in healing the ocean, in helping the Tohoku region, in contributing to Japan rising from its ashes again—that would be a tremendous honor.”Watch his TED Talk: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills

Get to know: Musical artist Ryan HolladayThe Cliffs notes: Ryan Holladay is a TED2013 Fellow who creates site-specific sound installations. With his partner Hays Holladay, he’s composed pieces activated by the National Mall in Washington, DC, and by Central Park in New York City.Inspiring quote: “Think of this as a choose-your-own-adventure of an album.”His new project: Holladay would like to create his largest location-aware album to date, one that spans the entirety of Highway 1 on the Pacific coast of the US. By teaming up with painters and designers, he wants to create a series of artistic pit stops along this famous road.What winning this grant would mean for his project: “This grant would give us the ability to go further with our technology than we have in the past. Our projects have been a labor of love, and we’ve released all of them for free. Having no revenue from the apps posed a problem for us, as we weren’t able to update them as frequently as we would have liked. It has limited our ability to make the audio engine as robust as we know it could be. We’ve been so inspired by this beautiful stretch of highway along the Pacific coast, and we would love the opportunity to execute this concept of location-specific audio on a larger scale than we’ve done before and recruit other artists that we’ve always wanted to work with to help.”Watch his TED Talk: To hear this music, you have to be there. Literally.

In January of 2013, TED Fellow Cesar Harada, inventor of an open-source sailing robot, set sail on a four-month, 14-country round-the-world journey with Unreasonable at Sea, a global innovation accelerator on board a boat. Here, he tells us about how this extraordinary voyage helped crystallize his vision for how his open source sailing robot Protei will contribute to cleaning up the world’s ocean and freshwater environments.

What is Unreasonable at Sea, and how did you come to join this expedition?

The Unreasonable at Sea is an accelerator for global innovation in social entrepreneurship. It’s a program for 10 entrepreneurs hosted on a floating university that sails around the world for four months while being mentored by a group of 20 of the world’s most potent entrepreneurs. On the ship we developed our strategy and business models — in port we met with potential investors, governments, academics, nonprofits and the local startup scene.

The program was started by Daniel Epstein, co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute, and George Kembel co-founder of the Stanford d.school. Several of my friends recommended that I apply to this program. At first sight, it was very attractive, but when I found that they would take 6% equities from our company Protei, Inc., I became hesitant. Fairly close to the deadline, the TED Fellows program organisers encouraged me to apply, so I finally did and decided to go with Gabriella Levine, Protei, Inc.’s COO, on this life-changing adventure. The program went beyond my expectations, changed me as a person and helped us define our business future.

What was the mission of the journey, and how did it dovetail with what you’re doing with Protei?

About 1,000 companies applied to this program shy of 100 different countries of origin, and only 11 ended up being selected. The main criterion is that you have to be a for-profit startup providing a technology that has the potential to impact positively the lives of millions of people. The core belief of the program is “entrepreneurship can change the world” — quoting George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man (/woman) adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Even though the program is taking place on the seven seas, Protei was the only company which was actively connected to the ocean. Our company designs and manufactures open hardware — shape-shifting sailing robots to explore and clean the ocean. Think maritime drone to transport environmental sensors and clean-up payload. The range of applications for a fleet would be to skim oil spills, collect plastic trash, measure radioactivity around Fukushima, patrol natural reserves and fish populations, mapping coral reefs, providing data connections between underwater robots and satellites. We have decided not to support weaponized applications.

Tell us about a few of your most crucial stops and what you learned in each. How will these inform your future work with Protei?

In Hawaii, we learned how Protei could help aid plastic pollution research. We met with Dr. Henk Carson, Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins who are among the pioneers for plastic pollution research. We journeyed to Kamilo Beach and sampled plastic from the multicoloured beach made of pretty much only plastic. Pessimists estimate hundreds of millions of tons of plastic trash are currently breaking down into the ocean and slowly coming up the food chain back to our plates; the other estimate only tens of tons: the scientific community fails at agreeing on the actual amount of plastic pollution in the ocean and its destructive effect on the life in the ocean due to the lack of data, frequency and resolution. Protei could carry optical sensor similar to plankton counter and measure plastic debris in the ocean.

In Ghana, oil pollution is threatening traditional fisheries. In 2007 large oil reserves were discovered, and intensive exploitation started in 2010 near Takoradi shore, since renamed “oil city,” where western and Chinese oil companies have rushed. Traditional fisheries are suffering pollution, and the oil spill response capacity seems very inadequate, following the bad example of the Nigerian oil industry. We met representatives from the ministries of energy, environment and fisheries and universities, and also went fishing with local fishermen. Protei is a modular sailing robot, so we could carry fish counters as well as oil detection equipment to evaluate the impact of oil pollution on fish populations.

In Japan, we investigated radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean. With the Safecast volunteer network we built an underwater Geiger counter and measured radioactivity on the seabed in the exclusion area near Fukushima. Recently 120 tons of contaminated water used to cool down the melting nuclear power plant have leaked, and nobody knows the long term consequences of such pollution in the ocean. Around 300,000 Japanese are still refugees in their own country, unable to return to where they used to live in places that were either devastated by the earthquake and tsunami, or that are currently contaminated. We plan to return to Fukushima in September and deploy underwater Geiger counter-equipped Protei around the Fukushima power plant.

In the cases above, Protei can be a part of the solution. Protei will also be useful for general oceanography and water-quality assessment, especially in Vietnam and India, where we witnessed terrible river and lake pollution. In Morocco, we organized a hackathon that was so successful, some of the participants have now set their own permanent Hackerspace in Casablanca.

What did you achieve?

As a company, Protei progressed on the community level, in that we now understand much better what our customers and developers from around the world want, and how much they are willing to spend to address which ocean issues. In terms of technology, we did testing in the field on specific applications, which led us to make many important design decisions, define our initial feature set and a plan to develop the technology in the future. And we also developed our business strategy: we are looking for corporate partners and sponsors interested in ocean research and protection.

In the short term, we want to provide high-quality oceanographic instrument transport at the price of toys. We aim to manufacture 1,000 Protei (small, 1 meter-long units) by the end of the year with a simple feature set based on an Arduino microcontroller that can be upgraded with a Raspberry Pi or fitted with an Android-powered phone to control a fleet of Protei anywhere in the 3G range with high environmental data feed. We’re already in the process of building a new community and retail website for the date of public release.

It sounds like this journey crystallized many things for you, both in terms of what Protei can do and where it needs to go, as well as personally. You decided during the journey to move to Hong Kong. Why?

As a business we are trying to imagine how capitalism can be used for the environment first. We believe that if a technology is good for the environment, it should be made available for everyone to use, modify and distribute. This is why we are installing ourselves in Hong Kong and manufacturing in Shenzhen, where we are most likely to be copied. The problems in the ocean are too immense for us alone. The Hong Kong-Shenzhen combination is amazing for the speed of prototyping and testing, with immediate access to parts and affordable manufacturing. The future of copying will benefit the environment.

On the personal level, I found a home at sea. That’s where I want to live. And being exposed to so many forms of aquatic pollution and experiencing how it affects people’s lives has confirmed the relevance of our work, stimulates our creativity and increases my sense of urgency. I’m excited to transition from prototype to product, and build a community to explore and protect the ocean.

Two years ago, a chance discussion with a group of Gulf of Mexico fishermen changed the course of Cesar Harada’s life. The TED Senior Fellow had landed his dream job at MIT in Boston, but after hearing first-hand accounts of the conditions in the Gulf following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, Harada tendered his resignation and moved to New Orleans. His mission: to create a boat better able to drag absorbent material through the spill area for more efficient clean up.

Harada looked to ancient sailing techniques to inspire his design. In the end, he created a vessel — called Protei – that bends and flexes, capturing the wind in both directions. The boat is able to tightly snake through oil-covered areas, with the current, cleaning wide swaths of oil with low energy output.

As Harada developed his shape-shifting prototype, he published the plans online, collaborating with others to make the boat as efficient as possible. Rather than try to profit from his new sailing technology, Hasada aims to keep all the hardware open-source. As he says in his inspiring TEDTalk, “We need to share information … to replace competition with collaboration.”

Because Harada believes so deeply in sharing, below, a look at other oil spill clean up technology with great promise.

A robot that detects spills
Liquid Robotics, a start-up in San Francisco, has created a robot that can sense oil leakage around drilling platforms. As CNN reports, these robots could prevent rig explosions like the one that happened in the Gulf. Even better? The robots are powered only by the sun and the waves. While the bots are pricey — $200K, to be exact – the company is reportedly looking to make them rentable as well as buyable.

Soak-up sponges
Oil in the ocean may not be too different from cooking oil dripped on your kitchen sink. According to Science Daily, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a lightweight sponge called aerogel — made of clay and plastic — that absorbs large amounts of oil. Made on a mass scale, these sponges could tackle spills in the ocean — and allow the sopped-up oil to be squeezed out for use after absorption.

A very groovy disc
At TEDxOilSpill, held in 2010, Wendy Schmidt and the X Prize Foundation announced that they would donate $1.4 million to teams presenting novel solutions to the Gulf of Mexico clean up effort. Team Elastec, an Illinois-based company specializing in oil spill recovery, won the first prize of $1 million by creating a giant grooved disc that skims oil more than three times more quickly than the industry standard. “When we first started, I gotta admit we said, ‘We don’t know if we can do this,’” said team member Charles Storey. Their winning skimmer, however, recovered an astounding 4,670 gallons of oil per minute.

An oil-collecting funnel
So who won second prize? Team Nofi, a maritime technology company from Norway. The group won $300K for their innovative Current Buster system, which captures 2,712 gallons of runaway oil per minute. As X Prize technical director Jeff Skipper, “It’s like a great big Slip ‘n’ Slide with two huge pontoons.”

Magnetic soaps
One of the biggest problems with current oil spill clean up is the use of oil dispersants, which do not easily break down. According to the website Mother Nature Network, scientists at the University of Bristol have created a more environmentally-friendly soap — still in development — that is iron-rich and salty. Thus, when magnetic force is applied, the soap rises to the surface — with the oil still trapped inside.

And check out these TEDTalks about oil spills:

The political chemistry of oil
Lisa Margonelli, Director of the New America Foundation Energy Policy Initiative, says that oil executive firings are pure political theater. The real issue with oil spills is the insane amount of oil we consume.

The oil spill’s toxic trade-off
Marine toxicologist Susan Shaw explains how the clean up strategy of chemically breaking down an oil spill might save beaches, but at a far too great cost to the deep sea.